[Article] ASRock Z68 Extreme4 board died!

Remember I was telling that there were some minor issues with the motherboard? It seems that they really were clues to what was to become. Last night, I diagnosed my motherboard as dead. 

Let me explain what happened. 

Yesterday I came back from work and used the PC for a little while. Then I went out with my wife. The PC was working fine till then. I pushed the power button and left the house. I didn't wait for it to turn off completely. For some reason, it takes quite a bit of time to shutdown. When I came back home, I felt something was not right. The PC was powered up. The display was off. I turned the display on, but it didn't come alive. There was no signal. But the PC was powered up as the power LED and fans were running. I pressed the reset button. Nothing. I pressed the power button. Nothing. I pressed and held the power button. Nothing. So I pulled the plug from the wall and plugged it back. The PC turned ON alright. I could go into the desktop. And then, all of a sudden, the PC turned OFF. This happened few times. Even when I had the "Automatically Restart" at System Failure option unchecked, it still didn't give a BSOD. Just power off. Not even a restart. 

My 4.5GHz overclock on 2600K has become unstable!

It's been a while since I tested for stability of my CPU's 4.5GHz overclock. I ran the blend test of Prime95 of more than 6hrs back then and I felt that was sufficient. However, PC has been giving random lockups in the past couple of months and I didn't want to accept that the reason for this instability was because my overclock wasn't stable enough. For some reason, it was so hard to find the settings that made my PC stable, and I didn’t want to go through all that again. It could be because I wanted to both overclock and save power at the same time. That's not something that's easy to achieve, obviously. Or it could be because the motherboard is not the best when it comes to overclocking. Or it can even be that this CPU is a bad clocker. Or I could have been doing something wrong in the first place.

Anyways, the reason for the recent instability could be due to many reasons. The first one could be because the last time I checked for stability, I didn't use a version of Prime95 that supported AVX instructions. Then, I did a couple of UEFI updates and maybe I needed to change “some values” to make the CPU stable under the firmware that I'm using currently. Or it could well be a problem with the power supply or motherboard or memory.

 

Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-E Extreme cooler - installation experience

In the previous post I mentioned that I bought this super cooler and now it is time to install it. A lot of things happened while installing the cooler, so someone who is looking to buy this cooler might find this information I’m going to write in this post. It’s a long post, so read it all slowly, if you are interested in the topic. Important notes come up at different places, whenever necessary.

First things first. I had to remove the old CNPS9900MAX-B cooler first to get going. Since I reseated the cooler a few days back, I could quickly take it off. Then I cleaned the thermal paste residue from the CPU.

Then it was time to install the new cooler. Here’s what was inside the box.

		Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-E Extreme VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Bought the Silver Arrow SB-E Extreme cooler

I couldn't take it anymore. So I went and ordered the Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-E Extreme cooler on Thursday before going to sleep. Before that I did some serious assessment as to whether I should go with this cooler or the Noctua NH-D14. Since the NH-D14 is a bit more expensive and the non-Extreme model is almost identical to the Noctua in terms of performance. But the new Extreme edition, thanks to its high CFM fans, can cool it much further. Some reviews say the difference is about 5-8C. Having that option is good I guess. Of course it will depend on the airflow inside the case.

But still I had to check 3 things before I bought the cooler.

1. This is a tall cooler, because of the sheer side of the fans and the heat pipes that protrude from the top. But on the official Thermalright Silver Arrow club page on OCN, I found several people who had cooler installed in the Raven RV03 without any issue. (Although the height of the cooler is 165mm and the max height of the cooler supported by the case is 163mm. I guess the protruded nature of the window helps?)
2. Will it fit with the Corsair Vengeance Memory modules? It was mentioned in a review that the heat sink itself didn't protrude over the memory slots. It was the fan that caused the problems. So what that reviewer proposed was that instead of having the fan in the front, move it to the back. Instead of push-push orientation, you have to install it as pull-pull. It should not hurt the cooling performance especially since there are two intake fans directly at the bottom of the case. But it was still doubtful whether I could fit the memory module closest to the heat sink fine. The Vengeance sticks are not only tall, but the sinks add additional width to the naked sticks. Anyhow, the worst case would be me having to remove the heat sink on the memory module closest to the CPU. I was ready for that possibility. But I hoped that I wouldn't have to do that.
3. Then I had to see if the VRM sinks on the motherboard would cause problems. I didn't expect this would cause problems but I had to make sure anyways. It seemed that there were people having the cooler installed on the same motherboard as mine, the ASRock Z68 Extreme4.

So, it seemed everything was fine, thus I ordered the Silver Arrow SB-E Extreme from Amazon. Price on Amazon was the cheapest. The price was almost same as the non-Extreme. It cost me ¥8,563. Hefty price for a cooler, right? Well, I think I should have bought this cooler in the first place; not the Antec Kuhler 620 AIO water cooler or Zalman CNPS9900MAX which this replaces. Those were the waste of money.

 

The cooler arrived yesterday thanks to Amazon Prime's one day shipping. But since I knew it was going to take a while to install the cooler, and it was too late, I postponed it to the next day.

 

P.S.

Do yourself a favor. Don’t get RAM with tall heat spreaders when you go shopping for RAM the next time.

The VBIOS of your discrete VGA card does not support UEFI GOP…

The VBIOS of your discrete VGA card does not support UEFI GOP, so it can not support “Ultra Fast Boot” and “CSM Disable”.

That’s the error message I got when I selected the “Ultra fast boot” option in the brand new beta UEFI of my ASRock Z68 Extreme4 (non-gen3) board. It’s admirable that ASRock is still pushing out firmware updates for this board which is almost 2 years old. They already have a newer revision of the board and a newer generation (7 series chipsets) of the board. Instead of adding these fancy features only to that newer generation, they have been adding them to the old models as well. Well, their priority is of course the newer generation of boards.

Today I accidentally discovered that there was a new beta BIOS (or UEFI) for this board – version 2.21 beta. It was released about a week ago – 25th of February. These are the release notes:

Windows 8 Ready.
Note: "Ultra Fast" is only supported by below conditions.
1. OS Windows 8 is installed on GPT format.
2. Graphics supports UEFI GOP.

Not much there, but the part that says “Ultra Fast” caught my eyes. They were developing a BIOS that allowed ultra fast boot up on Windows 8 for their motherboards based on Intel’s 7 series chipset, but I didn’t expect it to be released for the older motherboards. (In case you didn’t know, mine’s got an Intel 6 series chipset.) I downloaded it quickly and flashed without thinking twice. I took screenshots of my overclock settings and everything else because I would lose them once I updated BIOS.

Windows 8 Pro RTM Bootup

I remember Microsoft promising near instantaneous bootup times back from Windows XP days. But we all know how they didn’t live up their promises – especially when your installation got few days old. Microsoft is promising the same thing again. Let’s see what happens this time.

 

Just captured a video showing how fast a fresh copy of Windows 8 Pro (RTM) boots up on my PC. BTW, fast start is disabled because I don’t feel like having a 10GB+ hiberfil.sys (12.7GB in fact in my PC) on the SSD just to shave off a couple of seconds from the boot up time. I’m sure with fast start enabled, I can do better.

 

Note: Fast start only kicks in if you shutdown the PC, and hit the start button again. Directly restarting from Windows does not give better restart times.

 

 

 

Enabling or disabling fast start

 

Here is where you enable or disable fast start. Only if you have hibernation enabled, you can enable or disable fast boot option.

 

ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Virtu issues resolved

ASRock released a new beta UEFI (L2.05) that fixed the broken Virtu support.

It is back to the way it should be. It does not install itself as a trial version.

Now why can’t they bring Virtu support to mainstream apps? At least to Handbrake?

Overclocking the Intel Core i7 2600K with ASRock Z68 Extreme4

There are few important things to know about overclocking your Sandybridge CPU.

 

BCLK:

Unlike the previous generation CPUs, with Sandybridge CPUs you don't have two parameters to change  when increasing the clock speed.

Clock speed = BCLK x Multiplier

Sandybridge CPUs have a default BCLK of 100MHz. You cannot increase it more than few MHz before the system becomes unstable. Some chips are capable of 103MHz or more, but most chip + motherboard
combinations don't like going above 100MHz at all. So the easier way to overclock your SB CPU is by increasing the multiplier. For that, you need to buy an unlocked CPU - denoted by the letter K at the end of the model name (e.g. 2600K)

 

Lucid Virtu broken with L2.03 beta UEFI for ASRock Z68 Extreme4 (non Gen3)

Remember that in the previous post I mentioned that ASRock pulled out the *new* L2.02 beta UEFI from their website? Few days later, they released the L2.03 beta UEFI. Of course, I didn't think twice and upgraded. (Who did you think I was?? XD)

Everything is fine after the update, except for one little thing. They somehow broke the Lucid Virtu License with it. Just because you have a Z68 motherboard, you cannot install the Lucid Virtu software. The motherboard has to have a license to use it. I think it is there in the UEFI microcode. So when you install the Lucid Virtu software, it will check if the motherboard has the license to use it, and it will install fine. If not, it will install as a 30-day trial. That's exactly what is happening with this UEFI update. I even reinstalled Windows to see if it was something else. No, other people also have reported the problem. Oh well! I wish I didn't have to reinstall Windows.

As usual, the latest version that lists on Lucid's website is newer than the one listed on ASRock's website. So naturally, you would download the one on Lucid's website (currently, version 114 is the latest. ASRock
lists only version 112). When I tried to install it, it mentioned that this is a 30-day trial. When I install the one on ASRock's website, it would not show that message. But when you go into the ABOUT page in Virtu Control Panel, it would list it as a 30-day trial. Bummer!

This is what it is like now

This is what it should be like (see it is not a trial)

ASRock updated the UEFI on Z68 Extreme4 (and other Z68 boards) for IvyBridge, then pulled the update?

ASRock released new UEFIs for the entire Z68 lineup, getting ready for the IvyBridge launch.

Here’s a comparison between 1.60G UEFI and L2.02 beta UEFI on my Z68 Extreme4 (non-Gen3).

The makeover actually is same as the one on the ASRock Z77 mobos. =)

Main screen:

Intel Sandybridge, here I come (Core i7 2600K, ASRock Z68 Extreme4)

After a lot of thought, I went ahead with the Sandybridge upgrade. If you know me, you should know that I am always looking for the sweet spot when it comes to performance for the $$$. This time, things have changed.

Why did I have to upgrade?

Well, I didn’t have to, but there were few issues with my old PC.

• It wouldn’t POST some times. It had warm boot problems.
• I couldn’t add a second graphics card, if I wanted to, because the SATA ports would be right underneath the second card, rendering 4 out of 6 ports unusable. Of course I might not add one right now, because there is no real need at the moment. But definitely when BF3 comes out. Maybe I would buy two GTX560’s or 570’s.
• I was doing a lot of video encoding stuff. A faster CPU would benefit.
• And most importantly, fun! And we got our mid-year bonus + I made about 40k in the last couple of months from overtime work.
• Besides, I could sell my old stuff off, so that I can make some of what I spent, back.

So what did I upgrade to?

• CPU: The top of the line Sandybridge Core i7 2600K. I bought this off second hand, for about $40 less.
• Motherboard: Brand new ASRock Z68 Extreme4
• Cooler: Antec Kuhler 620

Let’s see why I chose each of them.